Mokbel appeals against sentence

Drug lord Tony Mokbel will likely have to wait over Christmas and the new year before learning whether his latest bid for freedom, or at least a little less time in jail, has succeeded.

Mokbel appealed against his conviction and sentence this week, accusing the Australian government of violating international law by rushing through his extradition from Greece and claiming the judge who sentenced him to 30 years misunderstood a lawyers' agreement.

Victorian Court of Appeal president Chris Maxwell and Justices Peter Buchanan and Mark Weinberg reserved their judgment on both appeals to a date to be fixed, but it is unlikely to be this year.

After appealing against his conviction on Wednesday, Mokbel's lawyers on Thursday said Justice Simon Whelan sentenced him to more than the range of between 20 and 23 years agreed to by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) and his defence team.

Justice Whelan sentenced Mokbel to 30 years with a minimum of 22 in July this year after he pleaded guilty to two trafficking charges and one of incitement to import drugs.

Mr Kassimatis said Justice Whelan misunderstood the agreement and also argued the sentence was manifestly excessive and crushing for a man with heart problems.

Doctors have said Mokbel's heart condition gives him a life expectancy until around 2036.

"It's effectively a life sentence," Mr Kassimatis said.

Fran Dalziel, for the crown, said Justice Whelan may have misunderstood the range in the agreement between the lawyers, but said that did not make the sentence excessive.

In her written submission to the court, Ms Dalziel also said an email sent from the DPP to Mokbel's lawyers was not an agreement on the sentence, but "a revelation of the submission that would be made to the court by the prosecution".

She said if the judge considered the agreed range was inadequate, he was entitled to deliver a longer sentence.

Despite his guilty pleas, Mokbel's lawyers also say his conviction was unlawful and he was the victim of a miscarriage of justice when he was extradited in 2008 after 15 months on the run.

His lawyer Debbie Mortimer, SC, told the court on Wednesday the Australian government rushed through his extradition before his application to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) for interim measures to allow him to stay in Greece had been processed.

She says this is in breach of his human rights and European law.

Mokbel disappeared in March 2006 while on trial for importing cocaine, fled to Greece and was discovered in June 2007 in Athens.

He landed back in Australia in March 2008.

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